Informality in business reached its highest peak in 8 years

Informality in business reached its highest point in the last 8 years: of 9.1 million businesses, 5.5 million are not registered with Sunat, according to the Institute of Economics and Business Development of the Lima Chamber of Commerce (CCL).

This figure is alarming because it shows a progressive increase (see graph) of irregular work in the country, after a year where labor informality covers 75% of Peruvians. Compared to 2021, the increase in small informal businesses was 7.9% and in relation to the pre-pandemic, 10.24%.

Likewise, the largest report of informal increase (39%) has occurred in less than a year, while 28% have a seniority between 1 to 5 years and only 7% exceeds 20 years.

underlying motives

More than half of the informal workers (51.2%) consider it unnecessary to register in the Sunat and 33.1% report that their production is low and 8.5%, that they only started eventually.

Francisco Pantigoso, director of the Master’s Degree in Taxation at the UPC, maintains that the problem lies in the lack of tax culture and knowledge of administrative processes on the part of businessmen, to this is added that the State does not simplify taxes, which are seen as something complex where you can fall into fines —even higher than the actual income— with a coercive execution.

In addition, there is no expansion of the taxpayer base either, which could cause more control to fall on them, increasing the risks of falling into informality. “Taxes should be adapted to the economy, those who are in a subsistence enterprise should not pay them. There is a blind collection that does not verify the real taxable capacity, ”he specified.

keys

Items. Commerce (34.2%), transportation and storage (22.2%), and accommodation and restaurants (12.6%) are the most informal.
Scope. 13.4 million Peruvians it is casual.